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Saturday, September 06, 2008

Question from Carol-Louise - Image of Elizabeth I as a toddler

I was watching a documentary on Elizabeth I on video, which appeared on the Discovery channel a few years ago and the front cover bears the portrait of her when she was crowned queen at 25.However, when the voiceover is discussing her early years as a small child, some of the images used to illustrate the points of Elizabeth as a toddler, were of charming portraits of a toddler with strawberry blonde hair and traditional Tudor dress.I was unaware that portraits of Elizabeth I as a small toddler were in existence. But I have searched for them online and found no such mention of them.Is it true that there are such portraits in existence or was it artistic license merely for the video?

4 comments:

PhD Historian
said...

I have not seen the program you are talking about, but I am not aware of an authentic portrait of Elizabeth that dates before her teenage years. On the whole, portraits of any infants and small children, even royal children, from the Tudor period are exceedingly uncommon. That is one reason why the Cobham family portrait by Eworth is so famous. It shows 6 children all under the age of ten years.

I wonder if the producers used the famous Holbein portrait of Edward VI as an infant?

http://www.nga.gov/fcgi-bin/timage_f?object=71&image=491&c=gg35

If thats is not the portrait that you saw, artistic license was used. Hollywood is notorious for making things up.

There is one portrait of Elizabeth as a child but the portrait shows her at three different ages. one at three,five and eight.I suggest if you want to look and see this picture look at Henryviii and his six wives a pitkin guide by pitkin.The book is more for education than interest although I got it because I found the book and the Tudor era interesting.I am not sure if you have heard of this book but I would try a library or online sites that sell books.